The Two Main Teacher Unions, the National Association of Schoolteachers Union of Women
Social Partnership, Flow and Contra-low in English Teacher Unionism
Bob Carter, De Montfort University
and
Howard Stevenson, University of Lincoln
27th International Labour Process Conference,
Edinburgh6-8 April 2009. Social Partnership, Flow and Contra-low in English Teacher Unionism
For 25 years or more teachers in English schools have had a troubled relationship with governments. Teachers have complained about pay levels, excessive demands and workload, changes to curriculum, and school governance and structures. In turn governments have expressed concern and frustration at education standards and the unwillingness of teachers to engage with reforms. The Conservative Government response from 1979 was to go on the offensive and weaken both the professional input of teachers, through for instance abolishing the Curriculum Council, and the position of teacher unions through the abolition of collective bargaining. The Government also established local management of schools through the Education Reform Act 1988 undermining Local Authority influence and disrupting their relationships with teacher unions. Local management of schools was promoted in the name of decentralising control of schools, but, by lessening the role of local education authorities, centralisation was being consolidated through a national curriculum and a raft of requirements such as compulsory testing and publication of examination results.
As a consequence of the above developments, the two main teacher unions, the National Association of Schoolteachers Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) and the National Union of Teachers (NUT), saw their relations with successive governments deteriorate in this period Marginalised over curriculum changes and excluded from collective bargaining, the unions saw their members’terms and conditions worsen and remained oppositional to numerous aspects of government education policy, driven as it was by the desire to increase competition between schools.With the advent of the New Labour Government in 1997, funds allocated to education were raised consistently year on year and the threat of teacher redundancies receded.Teachers’ responses were not ones of universal gratitude, however, as New Labour maintained the general direction established by the Conservative administrations: a welter of reforms included the extension of Academies, independent of Local Authority control, increased control over the curriculum and how it is taught via literacy and numeracy hours, the introduction of the ‘national challenge’ threatening ‘under-performing’ schools and the continuance of league tables and parental choice designed to pressure poorly performing schools,. Moreover, New Labour’s initial stance was in the words of one senior union official ‘Don’t let the unions through the door’ (Senior NASUWT interview).
One consequence of the reforms was the further stress on teachers’ performance and the attendant paperwork that was necessary to monitor it.The pressures to drive up performance, and the related accountability apparatus, appeared to be a significant factor in creating a crisis in teacher supply (Morris 2001).In the new situation of increased job security, in tandem with increased managerialism (Gewirtz 2002) and rising workloads, the momentum for industrial action mounted.Indicative of the growing anger of teachers over workload was its impact on the relations between teacher unions: in a rare show of unity members of the NUT, the NASUWT and the ATL all voted at their 2001 conferences for an identical resolution demanding a 35 hour week.The industrial action was scheduled to take effect in the autumn school term if the government refused to meet the unions' demands.From 2002 onwards, however, while not deviating from its main objectives, New Labour sharply changed its stance toward the teaching unions, offering them partnership and cooperation on solving the issue of excessive workload. This paper takes this instance of teacher union unity as its starting point and goes on to describe how it fragmented under a combination of government concessions, the formation of the Social Partnership, policy differences and rivalry between the main unions. In short, it will address the question of the extent to which participation in the Social Partnership has empowered or weakened unions as national institutions as well as examining the affects on internal union relations. The account is based on work carried out by Bob Carter, Howard Stevenson and Rowena Passy, as part of an ESRC funded award (RES–062–23–0034-A), examining the introduction of the policy of workforce remodelling and the changes in industrial relations it brought about. The full results of the research will be found in Carter et al. (forthcoming).
Government Concessions
In response to the twin pressures of a recruitment and retention problem, and the growing threat of escalating industrial action, the government in 2001 commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to undertake a review of teachers’ work to ‘identify the main factors that determine teachers’ and head teachers’ workload, and to develop a programme of practical action to eliminate excessive workload and promote the most effective use of all resources in schools in order to raise standards of pupil achievement’ (PwC 2001:1).There developed from this report the framework for the remodelling of the school workforce, a policy that promised the lightening of the workload of teachers through the expansion of support staff. This direction was also supported by another government initiative in the form of a pathfinder project, Transforming the School Workforce (DfES 2004). The former aimed at making recommendations for national change and the latter examining more flexible and innovative staffing structures and task flexibility at school-level.
These initiatives fed in to on-going talks with teacher unions that culminated in the signing of a national agreement, Raising Standards and Tackling Workload (DfES 2003), sometimes referred to as the National Workload Agreement. The agreement aimed to achieving ‘a progressive reductions in teachers’ overall hours over the next four years’ (DfES 2003: 2) and introduced a number of contractual changes to teachers’ duties in order to secure this. Principally these were:
- A requirement that a range of administrative tasks (the so-called ‘25 tasks’) were to be performed by support staff and were not to be carried out by teachers. These included, amongst other things, bulk photocopying, data entry, collecting money from students, and mounting displays.
- The provision of a guaranteed 10% of a teachers’ normal timetabled teaching time for planning, preparation and assessment (PPA).
- A ceiling of 38 hours per year that a teacher could be required to cover for absent colleagues, with an expectation that over time there would be ‘a downward pressure on the burden of cover’ (DfES 2003: 7)
The signing of the national agreement produced not only a substantive agreement but also signalled the establishment of an explicit Social Partnership, encompassing Local Authority employers, teacher and support staff trade unions, and the government.The Partnership continues to meet regularly as the Workforce Agreement Monitoring Group (WAMG), as well as having frequent dialogues outside the formal meetings. The single exception to membership of the Social Partnership is the National Union of Teachers (NUT), the largest teacher union in England and Wales. The union refused to sign the agreement on a number of grounds. It was fundamentally opposed the agreement enabling the use of teaching assistants to take whole classes, believing that this provision threatened the all-graduate nature of the profession for which it had long fought. The union, already unhappy about many aspects of education policy, was also uneasy about the nature of the social partnership between Government, employers and unions that the agreement signalled, particularly the requirement to both reach decisions through consensus and then to promulgate them. The union was concerned that this role would seriously undermine its independence.
A widening government agenda
The agreement to remove the specifically administrative duties from teachers and to allow them to concentrate on teaching and learning met with little principled resistance from teachers at national and local level. Nor did the further development insisting that management allowances for teachers should similarly be restricted to those with teaching and learning responsibilities as opposed to administrative (timetabling, examination officers etc.) or pastoral responsibilities (Heads of Year, for instance). In order to accomplish these changes, schools were required to agree new staffing structures to reflect these new priorities. These changes, supported by unions in the partnership, threatened staff holding management allowances with monetary and pension losses and in particular cases caused conflict and disillusionment within schools. The NASUWT, having agreed the reforms, attempted to mitigate the outcomes by arguing that staff with management allowances should be assimilated into the new posts, and the NUT took a similar if more robust position. In doing so these unions tacitly agreed to the narrowing of teachers’ roles and to the further requirements of the new posts that holders would be more actively engaged in line-managing staff and monitoring their results and those of their students. In effect, a new, more extensive managerial structure was established within schools with managers having to make pay recommendations about staff for whom they were responsible. As one headteacher commented:
In a sense what people are doing is creating mini-headteachers all over the school . . . sometimes the right decision is an unpopular one but you’ve got to be prepared to make it . . . It’s pushed that lower down the school (London Secondary Head 2).
Effectively, the new posts transformed many staff from colleagues into line managers much to the consternation of some.
Significance of the Social Partnership
The significance of the establishment of the Social Partnership should not be underestimated. No parallel arrangement is in place in any other part of the public sector. Nor since the effective end of collective bargaining through the abolition of the Burnham Committee in 1987hasthere been a forum for regular meetings between unions, employers and the government. The partners now meet weekly and regularly have ministers attending. Between these meetings informal exchanges also take place. Formally, it is a partnership of equals with a stress on integrative, ‘win-win’ bargaining and agreement based on consensus rather than votes (Walton and McKersie 1965). This practice means that the unions have no collective position but raise and comment freely on issues. The actual positions taken by individual participants are confidential with only the collective decision emerging. Moreover, all parties are bound to identify with and ‘promote and promulgate’ the decision (DfES 2003)and this requirement can prove difficult as witnessed by the ATL and NASUWT’s support for the removal of management allowances. As a result of the decision, some of their members stood to lose thousands of pounds per year and to have their pensions reduced.
The participating unions claim that the new relations with the Government have given them influence. They receive advance notice of policies and can, for instance, get ready access to senior officials to express concerns and reservations. The extent of influence this gives, however, is contested. There are some obvious limits: discussion is largely restricted to staffing and workload issues and areas of government policy such as the expansion of Academies and the role of Ofsted are excluded. Even on issues of that are discussed, there is some concern amongst some union officials that they have been turned into executive agents of the government:
There is a certain amount of irritation with the Government, for instance, over the use of the unions to delivery policy, reflected in the statement: ‘although they say the TDA is the delivery arm, actually we’re the bloody delivery arm’ (Senior ATL Official).
On the other hand, others seem to enjoy the enhanced authority:
One of the things that we’ve been doing as Social Partners is when we go out now we talk on behalf of the Partnership. We put all the pieces of the jigsaw together, or as many as we’ve got . . . Because one thing that schools are frustrated about, they can’t see how things join up and we set ourselves the issue of saying ‘We’re going to show how things join up’. So we started with remodelling, we started with the pay structure to support staff . . . And we kept telling people that this is a way of working, this is not a new initiative, this is a way of working in which when 14-19 [curriculum reform] comes on, if you get remodelling, you’ve developed capacity to do it.
(National Official 1, NASUWT)
From the establishment of the Social Partnership the signatory unions have been drawn into closer relations with government and value the consultation that takes place on a range of workplace issues. There is a danger however that the unions have effectively been incorporated and have become in McIlroy’s words ‘junior partners in change management’ (2000:6), a contention that is readily amplified by the NUT. Moreover, it is a judgement that finds some resonance within the partnership:
the fact is we’re talking about incorporation um. And only a fool would try to deny it. I mean that, and that, but it’s a calculated acceptance from the point of view. From my point of view um on the part of ATL it’s a calculated um acceptance of incorporation because of the benefits it brings (ATL National Official)
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The nature of the national agreement is such that unions do not bargain in the traditional sense of the concept and once consensus emerges they are duty bound to promulgate the policy even against opposition from their own members. Conversely, as relations between Partnership unions and the government have deepened, the NUT has been further excluded and at one point was threatening to take the government to court for failure to consult it when changes were made.Nor has its attitude towards the other unions been conciliatory (a stance that is mutual).The depth of its assessment of the strategy of the other unions is illustrated in the resolution it sent to the 2007 TUC Conference with read:
Congress agrees that the independence of our trade union movement and the independence of every affiliate is one of our guiding principles.
Congress will oppose any move to incorporate affiliated unions into any form of government or employer-based structure that would limit our ability to act independently, properly represent our members and develop the organising agenda to which the TUC is committed. Congress will oppose any attempted isolation of unions refusing such incorporation. Congress urges all unions seeking to recruit the same body of workers to explore ways to establish new, united and independent organisations, using the good offices of the TUC in this direction (TUC 2007).
Neither Tackling Workload, nor Raising Standards?
The formation of the Social Partnership and the agreement Raising Standards and Tackling Workload(DfES 2003) were both responses to union pressure and the need to address workload issues and thereby the sustainability of school-sector education. The national agreement as its title displays also stakes a claim for raising standards, something that introduces a tension within the reforms. But overlaying these aims was a government desire to change the nature of staffing and increase the division of labour through the expansion of new teaching assistant and other support posts (and here there are parallels with developments in the health sector (Cooke 2006). Workforce remodelling and the reconstruction of teachers’ labour were central to achieving policy objectives and these necessitated changes in the form of industrial relations. Understanding changes in industrial relations necessitates a concomitant understanding of the labour process rather than its dismissal (Bach et al. 2006).
According to the DCfS (2008), there are 441,200 teachers, a rise of 40,900 over the last decade. But there are now 176,900 teaching assistants, a rise of 116,300 - almost triple the number of 10 years ago. On the basis of the greater expansion of teaching assistants and support staff, the Schools Minister, Jim Knights was able to claim:
We’ve freed up teachers from administration tasks to do what they do best - teaching and giving pupils more individual attention. And we have invested massively in support staff on the ground to give them the back up they need (Knights 2008).
There is little evidence for this claim: in fact, just the reverse. Surveys show that the hours worked by teachers are beginning to rise again after a small fall (STRB 2008; NASUWT 2008), but the extent of hours is only one measure – there is certainly the feeling that teachers are more accountable and as a result the work more intense as a result of the reforms. The pressure for higher standards, as defined narrowly by test and examination results, is now transferred more effectively within the school to individual teachers, although again there is little evidence that standards have risen markedly using these utilitarian measures (Ofsted 2009)[i] or that any improvements can be attributed to the reforms.
Future of the Social Partnership and Teacher Unionism
The Social Partnership and workforce remodelling have encouraged changes in the form of industrial relations. The re-emergence of a national forum for consultation has centralised power in the Partnership unions through the mechanism of confidentiality and hence limited democracy. At the same time the reforms have placed a premium on change at workplace level without any corresponding shift in resources and agency to the schools. The place of branch secretaries remains as important as ever. This is as true for the NUT as it is for the NASUWT. Whatever the predilection for talk of ‘organising’ there is little in the way of encouraging workplace organisation.